When I went to college - a long, long time ago, the early '90's - management theorists, economists and others were praising the new wisdom of Japan. Management textbooks were full of talk of kaiban, 'Just-in-Time' and other revolutionary techniques fostered in Japan.

We all know what happened subsequently - a classic asset price bubble, a property market slump followed by 14 years of zero or negative growth in the property market (surely a record for any developed economy in the modern era), government mismanagement and corruption, banks going bust, etc . To be fair, many of the best Japanese companies survived - but some of them did not.

During the 1990's, the US reasserted itself and almost all of the new IT related and dotcom successes were based out of the US - or, if not, they were often US financed or influenced by technologies developed by US companies.

Looking into the future - is the Chinese economy all that it's cracked up to be?

What international brands has China created - compared to the US, Germany, Japan, etc?

What genuine creativity and industrial entrepreneurship is present in China?